


Knives Out

by AllDaveKat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Meteorstuck, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quadrant Confusion, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2020-07-09 04:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19881283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllDaveKat/pseuds/AllDaveKat
Summary: He looks so resigned and defeated, and something in you just…breaks. You can’t sit by and watch this happen. Karkat is a fucking irritating dick, but you don’t want him to sit around legit hating himself and waiting to die. That’s just against the bro code, you think. So that’s why you say what you say next:“You know, if you wanted, I could train you.”





	1. Ass O'Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads up, I might never finish this, so proceed with caution if that sort of thing bothers you!

Blue beady eyes are staring at you from the top of a dark staircase. Even though they’re far away you can tell they’re looking right into your eyes. You reach for your strife specibus but you’re frozen, you can’t move, you can only blink and breathe shallow breaths. You feel the displaced air of someone flashstepping around you, invisible. The eyes disappear, and suddenly reappear inches away from your face. A red puppet mouth takes shape below them, and a shrill laugh echoes through your head. You see a sword coming toward you from the corner of your eye, and you close your eyes, this is it—

You wake up in the dark in a cold sweat, panting, the image of those blue eyes staring at you lingers in your mind. You look frantically around and realize where you are, and it calms you down. You’re not in a creepy stairwell. You’re on a meteor, flying through space, with your ectobiological twin sister and a handful of trolls. Not safe, exactly, but definitely safer than you’re used to. You shake off these thoughts and reach for your phone.

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

TG: yo rose

TG: i guess youre probably asleep its ass o clock

TG: obviously im awake since im clockin all the ass

TG: just chillin in my room over here

TG: chiller than ice cube himself and by that i mean its fucking freezing on this rock

TG: seriously i gotta alchemize some warmer clothes

TG: these god tier pjs are great dont get me wrong but im still chillin my man titties off in here

TG: need me a heater or the warm comfort of a feminine embrace

TG: unfortunately every lady on this meteor is either related to me or a fucking alien oh well

TG: i guess message me back when you wake up

TG: its only been 2 days on this rock and im bored as fuck

TG: definitely not probably traumatized by our recent double suicide mission and the destruction of our planet and nearly everyone we know

TG: not having weird ass nightmares or anything

TG: damn i was hoping that would wake up your psycho senses

TG: how goddamn bored must i be that im actually asking to be headshrunk

TG: anyway

TG: im gonna go wander around the halls aimlessly since sleep clearly aint happening

TG: see you when i see you

You put your phone away and get up from the floor (seriously, you need to alchemize a bed or something instead of just this pile of blankets), leaving your mostly empty room behind. You don’t really have a plan for where you’re going, you just know that you’re not going to be able to get back to sleep after…whatever that was.

You wander out into the hall, first checking your surroundings for hidden enemies like Bro always taught you. Nothing seems to be lurking in the shadows so you slip on your headphones and begin the long walk to the common area. For some reason all the rooms in this station are spaced far apart from each other, so it takes fucking forever to get anywhere. Not that it really matters, since you’re stuck here for 3 years anyway, and also you can fly. Right now you’re just trying to kill time though so you decide to walk.

When you get to the common room, you’re sort of surprised to see Karkat there already. He doesn’t notice you arriving, his back is to the entrance (easy to ambush, your brain helpfully warns) and he’s watching some troll movie on his purple crab laptop. Troll tech is so fucking weird. You start up the coffee machine and it begins to cough out some brown sludge into your mug. The noise must startle Karkat because he yelps and turns around with wide eyes. Once he sees it’s just you, he relaxes back to his slouched posture and pauses his movie to begin yelling at you.

“Stop sneaking around in the dark, Strider, we’ve had enough grisly murders on this flying rock to make anyone jumpy as fuck! Have some common courtesy, for fuck’s sake.”

“Whatever, dude, you were the one with your back to the doorway. It’s like you’re asking to get shanked or something,” you reply.

Karkat bristles. “Excuse me for having the indecency to try to relax for the first time in weeks!! Nobody sane should even be awake right now, what the hell are you doing up?”

“Oh, so you admit you’re not sane?” You muse in a Rose-like tone.

He looks at you, unimpressed. “Seriously, what are you doing? Shouldn’t you be unconscious on your human sleeping platform like your mammalian littermate?”

“Don’t worry about me Vantas, sleep is for the weak and I sure as hell ain’t weak,” you ramble.

Karkat sighs and turns back to his movie, unpausing it. You’re kind of surprised he gave up that quickly, but you’re not going to complain. In fact, he looks about as tired as you feel. You sit down on the far end of the couch, inviting yourself to watch the remainder of the movie with him. He glances at you and asks, “Do you want me to restart it?”

You grunt in response, a non-answer.

He sits up and clicks to the start of the movie again.

You slip into a weird but comfortable silence as the movie plays. It appears to be a trollmantic comedy starring Troll Will Smith. You’ve observed Karkat watching a few movies now with him, and you’ve concluded he has a “thing” for the actor. You decide to give him shit about it, because, what the fuck else are you gonna do to pass the time?

“So on a scale of zero to flaming, how gay are you for Troll Willy?” You watch his face for a reaction and are not disappointed.

He screws up his whole face, pauses the film and takes in a breath. “What the grubfucking shit does that even mean? Am I ‘gay’ for him, like am I happy for him? I guess I’m happy he exists, obviously, he’s talented as fuck! Not that you would appreciate that, with your miniscule bulge brain!”

“Lol, no dude, the other meaning of gay. Like when two people of the same gender are into each other,” you explain. Why does this have to be so difficult? You were just trying to troll the guy, not get into a discussion of human sexuality, ugh. “Do trolls not have that? I know I’ve seen you reading some gay-ass looking porn in here before, don’t try and front.”

“Uh, I mean of course we have that, but there’s not a fucking word for it, that would be dumb as shit. That’s just how everyone is. That’s how romance works! Some trolls have a preference for gender in their concupiscent quadrants I guess, but it’s not something we really have terms for.”

He’s being a lot more forthcoming about information than usual, you must both be losing your touch at giving each other shit. You’ll blame that on the fact that you’ve been through a massive fucking ordeal in the past several days and you’re just. Fucking. Tired. Okay?

“Okay, well with humans it’s definitely a thing that we have words for. Not that I have anything against people or trolls being gay or whatever, but sometimes you gotta admit something is just gay as all get out. It’s good to have words to describe that shit, no?” You have lost control of this conversation. “Anyway, scale of 1 to 10. How hot are you for him? How much do you wanna rustle his jimmies? Whack his mole? Dingle his berries? Nut on his macademias—“

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?? Jegus fucking christ, Strider, I wouldn’t have invited you to watch this with me if I knew you were going to be such a douchenozzle about it!”

“Someone’s avoiding the question,” you sing-song.

He growls at you. Hot. Wait no, you meant… something else, fuck.

“No shame, my man, everyone has gay thoughts sometimes,” you prod, moving past your mental troll freudian slip. “I’ll admit to having jacked it to Obama once or twice. Though that may just have been me getting off to my own sense of patriotism.”

“I never fucking know what you’re talking about,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t actually seem pissed off at you, just pissy in general. You kinda like that about him. It’s easy as fuck to tell how he’s feeling—usually angry, but not like, about anything in particular—and even if he did get mad at you beyond the usual simmering bad temper, he couldn’t actually do any damage to you. You’re god tier, he’s not. It’s not like back at home, when you were always looking over your shoulder for Bro, waiting for the next beating. Fuck, you mean strife, as in a training session. “Beating” sounds… bad. Like abuse, or something. That wasn’t what was happening, at all. You’re grateful to your Bro for getting you trained up properly for the game. Sure it was a pain in the fucking ass and you might have some nasty scars from it, but you’re alive aren’t you? (“So are John, Jade, and Rose, and they didn’t have to spend their childhoods getting their asses beat by their guardians,” some part of your brain thinks, without your permission. You ignore the fuck out of it.)

Karkat seems to have gotten bored with your silence while you were distracted contemplating your unconventional childhood. He’s unpaused the movie. Troll Will Smith is now sneaking into a…speed dating cafe? Are those even a real thing? You can’t imagine them being a thing on Alternia, at least. How would you even know what quadrant to angle for on a speed date with a troll? Would there be like specific speed dating events for blackrom, where they hand you weapons at the door so you can beat each others asses and see if it gets you off? You think maybe you don’t understand quadrants at all.

Karkat sighs and slumps back against the couch. “I really don’t know why I’m even watching this movie right now. I’ve seen it a billion fucking times and I already know exactly what happens… just like all the rest of my goddamn movies. I can’t believe we have to wait a sweep and a half for anything to even happen. But I guess I should be thanking the gods—oh wait, that’s me!—for creating a scenario in which I can remain alive at least that much longer. As soon as we get to the new session, I’m grubfood.”

He looks so resigned and defeated, and something in you just…breaks. You can’t sit by and watch this happen. Karkat is a fucking irritating dick, but you don’t want him to sit around legit hating himself and waiting to die. That’s just against the bro code, you think. So that’s why you say what you say next:

“You know, if you wanted, I could train you.”

Karkat’s eyes go wide, and then narrow. “Why?” He asks suspiciously, in an uncharacteristic display of getting right to the fucking point.

You’re not super prepared to answer that. “Uh… why not? Weren’t you literally just complaining about how you’re gonna die when we get to the final boss scene? Do you have short term memory loss Karkat, is that what’s going on? Are you like Dory from finding Nemo, just following around this poor sad dadfish who lost his damn kid? Like jesus christ Mr. Fish you had one fucking job, take care of your damn spawn you dumbass—“

“Do you ever, fucking, shut up?” He rolls his eyes in a full body motion and turns to face you directly. “I meant, why the fuck do you even want to help me? What could you possibly get out of it? It’s not like I have a lot of great potential as a warrior. As much as past me thought he was hot shit with sickles, I already know I’m going to spontaneously expire the minute I come in contact with whatever fucking triple session abomination bosses we have to fight. I doubt any amount of training can change the blatant fact that I absolutely fucking suck grubshit at combat.”

“I mean, fair, but a little training’s better than nothing right? At least I can teach you how to dodge attacks so maybe you can keep yourself alive. I know we’re not BFFs or anything and you trolls seem to take any friendly overture as either a trick or a grand romantic gesture, but trust me, this is just plain old run of the mill human altruism. I’d rather that you didn’t die, and you probably would prefer that as well, and we have a way of making your death a slightly less likely outcome, so why not try it? Besides, I have literally nothing better to do.”

He sighs, giving you a considering look, then shrugs. “I guess why the fuck not.”

“Cool.” You don’t smile, because Striders don’t break their poker face, but you do feel peculiarly light inside.

“Yeah,” he grumbles, and turns back to face the screen. Neither of you talks for the rest of the movie. When it ends you just grunt a wordless goodbye, to which he responds with a sullen wave. Even so, you have a strange suspicion that you might actually be starting to think of Karkat Vantas as your friend.


	2. Training, Strider Style

You and Strider decide to meet up on the roof for strife training. You arrive a little out of breath after walking up all those stairs. Someone should have fucking warned you about them. He’s already up there waiting for you; he’s sitting on the edge of the roof with his back to you, but he turns around as soon as he hears your footsteps. There’s a strange tenseness to his posture when he stands up, and your sickles jump into your hands without you really meaning to summon them. But he just nods and goes, “sup.”

“So what are we actually going to be doing for this quote-unquote-training session? How does this work? I’ve only ever ‘trained’ with my lusus before and it was just a lot of him grunting and screeching while I tried to get past him to the thermal hull.”

“I thought we could start off with some hand-to-hand, and then introduce weapons after I get a sense of your fighting style,” he replies. 

“Sure, I guess that works,” you grumble, decaptchaloguing your sickles. 

He holds up his arms in front of his body. “I’ll let you take the first hit, come at me bro,” he deadpans. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

You’re a little unsure of how to start, but you’re desperate to prove yourself. Even if it’s just to some asshole that you barely know and couldn’t give two shits about. You know he’s patronizing you, he clearly thinks (knows) you’re not a threat, and it pisses you the fuck off, even though you know he’s right. 

You think about how he’s god tier, and you’re not, and how you failed fucking utterly as a leader and got your friends killed, and how you couldn’t even have become god tier *or* saved your friends without dooming the fucking timeline. You think about how much you fucking hate yourself, and him, and this whole situation, and you close your eyes and run at him, fists raised. 

The next thing you know, you’re flat on your back with the wind knocked out of you and Strider’s knee digging into your sternum. Your head is aching where it hit the floor, and the cold metal beneath you is exceedingly uncomfortable. 

He stands up, letting you go. “Wow, that kind of sucked, dude.”

“Yeah I fucking know it sucked!” you shout. “I told you I’m shit at this, there’s no point in even training me, this is just a prolonged exercise in humiliation torture, isn’t it? Why did I even bother listening to you in the first pl—“

“Whoa, whoa, calm down dude,” he smirks at you. You want to punch him in his fucking face. “Don’t worry. You might be shittier at fighting than a ten year old on oxycotin right now, but if there’s anyone on this meteor who can teach you to at least hold your own in a fight, it’s me.”

He offers you a hand, and you pointedly ignore it, grunting as you stand up. 

“Let’s start with the basics. Show me your fighting stance,” he says.

Two hours later, you’re sweaty, breathless, and your ass is sore as fuck from falling down on it so many times. Strider, infuriatingly, looks as unruffled as ever, aside from his skin being a little pinker than usual. 

“That wasn’t actually as bad as I thought. There might be hope for you yet, bro,” he says.

You’d snark at him but you’re really fucking tired, so you just nod. “I need an ablution before everyone on this meteor curls up and dies from my stench,” you say.

“Yeah, you smell like a butt died in a trash can,” he comments.

“Fuck off.” 

“On it. Same time tomorrow?” He starts heading toward the stairs.

“Yeah, fucking whatever,” you reply, following him.

A few hours later you're trying and failing to fall asleep. Your think pan does this really annoying thing where it fixates on the most disturbing stuff you've seen lately, and these days it has had a lot of material to work with. After blinking away the image of Eridan chainsawed in half for the fifth time, you decide sleep is just not happening today (again) and pull your ass up out of your recuperacoon. Slime drips everywhere. Ugh. Why do you guys sleep in these things again? You should probably not even bother getting in your coon most days since you only sleep like one in every 5 days. It just means doing more laundry. Oh well. You dry off and change into a clean pair of clothes, grab your husktop and begin the walk to the common room. 

You’ve been sitting on the couch for a few hours, you’ve lost track of how long really. You’re watching a troll Dane Cook movie this time. Unfortunately even his (admittedly shitty) jokes don't seem to be cheering you up. Your sludge of a coffee has turned ice cold so you get up to make some more. You turn around and fucking startle because fucking Strider is silently standing in the doorway, watching you.

“How fucking long were you standing there???” you yell.

He smirks. “Like 10 minutes. Wanted to see how long it’d take you to notice. If you’re training Strider style you gotta be on your toes all the time dude. Not that I’d actually attack you with your guard down or anything, that would be shitty, who even does that?”

“Well good job, you “got” me. Feel free to fuck off anytime now.”

He fully ignores your suggestion and instead plops himself down on the other side of the couch. “So what are we watching tonight?”

“ _I’m_ watching this great film called None of Your Fucking Business. It’s a human title, you might have even heard of it before.” 

“Come on, I’m bored, let me watch with you.” 

You grumble but start the movie over. You’ve already watched it dozens of times, it’s basically just background noise to you at this point anyway.

Strider settles into the couch and you sit quietly together for once, watching Dane Cook’s gormless face through your husktop screen.

When the movie's over, Strider stretches and yawns, while somehow managing to still have no facial expression. 

“Well that movie was terrible. So bad, in fact, I think I might actually be able to fall asleep now due to sheer boredom.”

“Yeah, it’s not one of his best,” you admit. The jokes in this one are mostly cheap hemocist cracks at lower classes, and punching down has never really been that funny to you. You really only watch this one because the auspisticism between Daleth, Farrek and Sallah is pretty well written. Most romcoms focus on flushed, black, or pale, so it's hard to find a decent ashen romance. 

Strider stands up to leave and awkwardly salutes you with two fingers before peacing out. The room suddenly feels a lot emptier, and you quickly switch on a new movie to drown out the silence.


	3. Human Sexuality

TT: Hello Dave. 

TT: I apologize for the late response to your last messages. 

TT: I've been otherwise occupied.

TG: hey rose whats up 

TG: i hadnt heard from you in so long i thought maybe you got vored by a horrorterror 

TG: i didnt come looking for you though cause i know its rude to invade on a girls private kinksploration time

TT: That may be the fastest you've ever turned a conversation incestuous before, congratulations. 

TG: dammit 

TG: ok but for real where have you been ive barely seen you since we got here

TT: I’ve been conversing with Vriska. We’re catching each other up on everything that went on in our sessions, so we can prepare a sound strategy for the next one. 

TG: ah so more light bullshit 

TG: glad to know i wont be required for any of that

TT: Actually, I could use your help on something.

TG: dammit

TT: I was hoping you could share with me any insight you have on Karkat. Specifically, anything that might help us in the final boss fight; information about his strengths, weaknesses, or his classpect.

TG: well first off i barely know the guy so i doubt i can help you much 

TG: second 

TG: yeah no thats about it thats all i really need to say on the matter

TT: Kanaya said you two have been spending a non-insignificant amount of time together. 

TG: that sneaky bitch 

TG: shit please never tell her i said that 

TG: i dont wanna get a surprise chainsaw circumcision

TT: ...

TG: ok ive been giving him some combat training here and there 

TG: but we're tryna keep it on the down low you know 

TG: hoping to avoid being hassled by vriska about this topic or any topic ever in the foreseeable future 

TG: wait can you actually see if that happens 

TG: legally as my sister you have to tell me if vriskas going to be annoying in the near future

TT: Even if I weren't a seer of light, I think I could take a fairly educated guess that the answer is “Of fucking course she is, Dave, it’s Vriska.”

TG: lol 

TG: gotta love a good dunk on spiderbitch

TT: I’ll agree not to tell Vriska about you and Karkat’s arrangement for now, if you tell me what you've learned about him so far.

TG: jesus christ please don't call it that 

TG: quote unquote arrangement 

TG: makes it sound like some sordid gay affair which is absolutely not what's been taking place 

TG: our secret activities are straight as fuck okay

TT: I love how your mind works, Dave. It’s truly… fascinating.

TG: ugh i just had a full body shudder 

TG: fine ill feed you my insider trading info about our resident loudmouth if you just stop insinuating gay shit about me 

TG: just for like five minutes please

TT: Fair. Five minutes is all you get, though.

TG: ill take what i can get

A soft knock on your door mercifully interrupts your conversation with Rose, and you message her a quick “brb.”

“Who is it?” you shout, not really wanting to get up from your semi-comfortable mattress. Seriously, you really need to alchemise at least a chair or something. 

The only response is silence, followed by another knock. It’s a very faint sound, almost like the person knocking has tiny arms that make it difficult for them to perform a sufficiently loud knock.

You stand up, equip Caledfwlch and head over to crack the door open carefully. Standing in the hallway is that little weird Carapacian dude you saw when you first landed here, the one who Rose said was dying. He looks pretty alive to you, though. You open the door all the way because he doesn’t really look dangerous or anything. He’s just standing there, wearing a sash that says “MAYOR,” with his beady little eyes looking up at you.

“Sup,” you say.

He waves a can of beans at you in lieu of a response.

“Uh.” You’re honestly not sure what to do here. “Are those for me?”

He shakes his head and walks a couple paces down the hall, then looks back at you, indicating for you to follow him. You have nothing better to do, so you close your door behind you and follow after him. You have to float slowly to keep pace with his tiny steps. It’s actually pretty goddamn adorable.

He leads you down a few corridors you haven't explored yet. At least, you don't think you have, shit all looks the same around here. Midway down a hall he enters a room and you follow him inside. It’s dark and you can’t see too well, and it’s prickling your fight-or-flight instincts just a tad bit. You pull out your phone flashlight and scan around the room, and you just see piles upon piles of fucking canned food. And canned sodas. Just, a lot of god damn cans. 

The little Carapacian guy turns to you and claps his hands. He points to a corner of the room where the cans are stacked up in formations that kind of look like a miniature town. Then he just sits down and starts stacking more cans. He looks up at you expectantly. You guess this is your life now? You sit down near him and, after a moment of thought, start building the Statue of Liberty. You’re already planning to alchemize some shitty jpegs to plaster all over it later. 

You and the Mayor (as you’ve decided to refer to him) work on stacking cans for a good couple hours, and it’s surprisingly relaxing. You usually don’t like spending time around strangers, but this guy seems pretty chill and non-judgmental. And even if he did have a judgy comment to make, he doesn’t seem like he would be able to express it anyway, so you’re pretty much safe. Not that rude comments constitute any kind of danger on your person, you just… don’t particularly enjoy getting verbally reamed in your spare time, you know? Anyway, it’s pretty sweet just constructing can buildings in silence together. Reminds you of building Legos as a kid, after Bro bought you a massive set one birthday. He occasionally dropped huge dollars on fancy toys for you, which makes you honestly really lucky. Lots of kids didn’t have that growing up.

After a couple hours your stomach starts growling and you decide it’s a good time for Doritos. You invite the Mayor along but he shakes his head, and just stares you in the eye as he guzzles a can of room temperature baked beans. 

When you get to the kitchen, to your displeasure, literally everyone on the meteor is already there (except Gamzee. Nobody’s seen him since Vriska let him out of the fridge a couple days ago, and he just scampered off into the vents like a 6-foot-tall raccoon). 

Rose is sitting on the red velvet couch with Vriska and Terezi, and they seem to be in the middle of a casual debate about classpect traits. Kanaya sits across from them in an armchair, knitting something large and green. You notice she’s not participating in the conversation much but she seems to be watching Rose carefully. You’re not sure if she’s eyeing her in a creepy bloodsucking vampire way or just a wants-to-bang-your-sister way, and you can’t decide which is worse tbh. 

Karkat’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading some smutty romance novel. You decide he’s probably going to be less of a pain in the ass to deal with than the snarky broad brigade, so you grab a bag of Cool Ranch and plop down across from him. Karkat glares at you briefly, as if satisfying his daily requirement to be an Ornery Asshole, then quickly turns back to devouring his book. 

“Whatcha readin there, Karkat?” You ask, then continue without pausing for an answer. “Looks kinda like Rose’s wizard porn cept the naked dudes on the cover of _your_ book aren’t 80 years old.”

Rose gives you a look you from across the room and you give her your best poker face in return. You suddenly remember you forgot to text her back earlier, whoops. 

Karkat sighs loudly and puts his book down. “Do you have nothing better to do than sit around making disgusting comments about my personal hobbies? I come here to enjoy some relaxing downtime, reading one of my _favorite_ novels, thank you very much, and not five minutes can pass by before Dave fucking Strider comes along and ruins it with his objectively terrible opinions.”

“Not my fault you’re constantly horny on main dude,” you reply. “You gotta expect to get owned at least a little if you’re gonna be reading literal porn in the kitchen.”

“It’s not porn, it’s fucking romance, you dipshit! Not something you’d know anything about, I’m sure. You couldn’t feel an emotion if it rubbed a coagulated dairy file across your bare ass.” Karkat emphasizes his point by miming an aggressive cheese-grating motion.

“Ok but for real please stop talking about my ass in front of Rose. She already thinks we’re secretly gay dating or something and I don’t want to encourage that line of thinking.”

“I have no idea what gay dating means, is that some kind of human quadrant?” Karkat has not lowered his voice at all, despite your warning.

Rose appears at the other side of the table, seemingly out of nowhere, and you startle slightly. If Bro were here he’d definitely give you a thumbs down for losing cool points. 

“Don’t mind me,” Rose says. “I just really wanted to be present for Dave’s explanation of human sexuality. It promises to be extremely enlightening.”

“Ugh,” you grumble. “See what you fucking did Karkat? You talked about my ass, and it summoned the she-beast of Freudian hell.”

Karkat looks back and forth between you two, then turns to Rose. “You. The more reliable one. Explain human quadrants to me, now.”

You snort. “Rose, the reliable one? She once tricked me into thinking baby carrots were what you get when regular carrots mate, and I didn’t figure it out until a year later when I told Jade and she laughed so hard she cried.”

Rose smirks. 

“No,” you continue, “You asked for _my_ explanation of human sexy times Karkat, and you’re gonna fucking get it. So the main thing to know is boys have a pengis, and girls have a kookah. If they get mushed together, their genetic fluids leak out and coagulate together to form a human baby. That’s regular straight people sex. Gay sex is when two dudes are in love and one wants to ride the others shout pole from here til next Sunday. There’s a third quadrant called lesbian sex and thats when two girls use scissors to cut each others hair and then paint their nails while sucking on each others elbows. Bam, sex education complete. You’re welcome.”

You stand up and take a bow. Kanaya applauds from across the room. Rose is bent over the table laughing and Karkat looks mildly disgusted. 

“That was the worst explanation of anything I’ve ever heard in my life. I have a thousand more questions than before, and I want exactly zero of them answered by you,” Karkat says. 

“Mission accomplished,” you say, returning to your bag of Doritos.

Rose wipes a probably-fake tear from her eye. “Thank you for that, Dave. I haven’t had a laugh that good since the horrorterrors told me that one about the consort and the Carapacian who walked into a bar.”

That night as you fall asleep, you suppress a small smile thinking about your earlier conversation. You think it’s actually kind of cool, hanging out with people in person for once. You wish John was here, but at least you have Rose, and Karkat’s good for a laugh anyway. Maybe the next three years won’t be so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @alldavekat on [twitter](https://twitter.com/alldavekat) and [tumblr](https://alldavekat.tumblr.com)
> 
> come say hi in the [davekat discord server](https://discord.gg/wGqTQmN) (18+)!


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